Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
My friend from Kobe who lives where I do told me that the only way to get really solid is to live there. I didn’t really accept that because, holy cow, that would suck if it was the only solution! I mean, when I took Spanish in high school I didn’t have this problem at all, but with Japanese I’m actively engaged every day willingly; I’m not taking any courses, it’s all on my own. I just don’t get it. I guess, maybe, I could do some active listening more, but that doesn’t help on my end for conversational stuff. I’m also having a Japanese student stay with me in two weeks, so I don’t want to come off as an idiot. Oh well.
@Ishizue Muto
I’m currently about halfway into season 4, and I imported どうぶつの森 and ポケモングリーン. While I can pick up a lot of key phrases, it’s incredibly useful to use these two as they both primarily use hiragana as opposed to heavy kanji. I know Zelda uses kanji whenever it can because it’s intended for teens/adults, and I’m not entirely sure about okurigana. But I would stick to JPN Animal Crossing/Pokemon. Again, I’m 100% caught up with everything I need to know at this point in Season 4, and I’m still constantly looking up vocab on Genki Jishou. A lot of NPC’s will use slang dialect depending on their age/social class/gender, so don’t be surprised if you don’t recognize a word or the structure of a sentence at first glance!
Just one quick thing to consider: the 3DS is not region-free; therefor, you need a JPN 3DS to play Zelda 3DS/any JPN 3DS game. However, the original DS is not region-locked, so you’re safe with Diamond/Pearl, JPN AC: Wild World, Spirit Tracks/Phantom Hourglass, etc.
Cool, thanks, Joel. The yen count seems very reasonable. I’m flying from the east coast of America, and I have two airports near me that both fluctuate heavily in prices! I’m hoping to not have to worry about hotels too much, either resorting to couch surfing or capsule hotels.
If you can afford to take some time off from work/have a place for the student to stay, there’s an organization called People Link that flies Japanese high school students over for varying lengths of time. I just had a student this last November for three days, and he was the bomb. I couldn’t believe how much my vocab/processing time for spitting out sentences improved, because he knew very little English. It was great, we’d just be huddled over his expensive-looking computer translator, taking turns typing things and learning new words. It was the best. I’m even hosting another student next month for a week! I should also mention that People Link pays you varying sums based on how long you’re hosting them. I’m getting paid 150 for next month. o.o;;
I’m not sure where you’re located, but I’m in Western MA… not sure if People Link is a nation-wide thing.
Their website hasn’t been updated since 1998 and looks like the old Amanda Please website, but here it is: http://peoplelink.org/
For those of you who have been to Japan before, how much would you suggest bringing for spending cash? And where in Japan is the cheapest to fly to? I’ve been looking into couch surfing, and really, the only reason I want to go is to simply be there and converse with people. I’ve imported most of the stuff I’d want over the years, so I’m not looking into spending a bunch of cash on material stuff, just food.
tl;dr
What’s the bare minimum of cash I could bring safely, what’s the cheapest airport statistically?
It’s cool, homes. Just don’t want you to get in trouble. ;)
*sigh*… emulation never has been, and never will be, legal if you own the cartridge. It is illegal, no matter what loops you try to jump through.
Ahhh, sorry, guys. Yes, I absolutely meant 「どうぶつの森」 Apologies, 1,000 times around.
But yeah, after spending some time with the Nintendo 64 version, I can’t recommend importing it enough. It’s especially interesting if you’re used to the English-language GameCube version; it’s distinctively more “exotic” in features and aesthetics. I used to gaze at my issues of Nintendo Power covering screen shots of 「どうぶつの森」/”Animal Forest” for N64 as a wee chap, wild-eyed with thoughts of what this incredible game could possibly be like. The feeling of being able to understand the animals, and reading things and saying, “yes! I understand you!” makes me live my 10-year-old’s fantasy!
The native version of the Animal Crossing series, known as どぶつの森 is incredible for picking up sample sentences. There’s almost zero kanji in the first one for the Nintendo 64, and in the later titles, hiragana is resting above every kanji throughout the game. As long as you have a good handle on the various particles/sentence enders, you’ll find yourself quite pleased with how much you can pull out of conversations with the towns folk! I usually just play with a dictionary plopped out on my lap, looking up and writing down anything I have trouble with.
The downside is Nintendo’s notorious region-locking tendencies. The Nintendo 64 version will require you to either purchase a Japanese N64 (costly and unrecommended), or physically alter your Nintendo 64 to allow it to fit foreign cartridges (incredibly easy and tons of guides on the ‘net for how to do so.) The GameCube version(s) will require a JPN GameCube, or a special disk which you can also look into. Chances are, you own some form of a DS (if you don’t, they’re like fifty bucks on craigslist/ebay, and it has such a rich back catalog!). The DS does not have any form of region locking, thus the Animal Crossing title for DS is fully playable and portable!
Hope this helps, good luck!
